Twelve Tips on How to Keep Your Craft Room Tidy

For most of us, cleaning is not something to look forward to. It’s a chore, and it feels as though it takes forever. So when it comes time to clean your craft room, you may not know where to start. Fabric may be piled everywhere. Perhaps ribbons are strewn from the ceiling to the floor. How are you going to get this room ship shape and ready for a new project? Well, you can tidy it up, but don’t worry! You don’t have to be afraid of completely gutting your craft room every time you clean it. You can use these twelve easy tips to get your craft room back into shape.

Reduce it to the Bare Bones

Sometimes you’ve got to start fresh in order to move forward. So take everything out. Really evaluate what items you need for your future projects and what items you know you will never use. Keep the necessities and throw out the excess. Once you know how much you have to put back into the room, you’ll be able to organize it more efficiently. You’ll feel pretty accomplished afterward.

Create Designated Spaces

It’s easy to throw a box of random crafting stuff on top of another both or a pile of clumped fabric. When you’re in a rush, you’re not always thinking about putting everything back in a nice, neat pile. However, there is something to be said for creating designated spaces. When you create a space for one specific item to go, you will automatically remember where you put that item. The act of repeating putting one item in one place, will lock in your muscle memory. Soon you won’t even be thinking about putting that one thing in that one place, you’ll just do it out of habit. Keeping you craft room clean and your leisure time longer.

Label/Color Coordinate

OK, the color coordination is more of an optional approach, but labeling is not. Always label your items. If you have a fabric drawer, label that drawer “Fabric.” If you have a box for beads label it “Beads.” Make sure you label what you have. So when you need some fabric and you can’t remember where you put it, you can read the drawer and see the “Fabric” label. Give yourself some visual aids to help you remember.

Provide Plenty of Storage

When it comes to storage it is better to have too much storage space than too little, within reason of course. Don’t purchase seven plastic tubs if you only have two yards of fabric. Then again, don’t use a small bookshelf to hold craft supplies that would fill fifteen large moving boxes. You want your amount of storage to be equal to, or slightly above, the amount of crafting supplies you currently own. If you have crafting supplies that need to be kept out of danger from moths and dust, put those items in sealable containers. If you have items that aren’t as easily affected by the elements, place them in open containers and on shelves. Use your storage space wisely. If you have any extra spaces, like a closet, use those spaces to help you keep your craft space organized.

Keep up a Daily Cleaning Routine

Set aside schedule time for cleaning your craft room after every time of usage. If you are left with a small mess, take five or ten minutes to clean up. If you leave a massive mess behind, take a good thirty to forty minutes to whip the place back into shape. Don’t put it off until the next day or the next time you use the room! Keep it clean as you go and you won’t be left with the chaos later.

Dust/Vacuum Weekly

Part of keeping your craft room tidy is keeping the dust and, occasional pet hair, out of the air and off of the floor. If you have pets that shed a great deal, vacuum as often as you can. If you live in area that’s known for its dust, dust and wipe down your craft room. Putting away your supplies and tools are not the only areas you want to keep clean. You also have to keep the atmosphere of your space clean. It’s hard to work on a crafting project when you’re sneezing and coughing because you’re breathing in all manner of dust and hair. If you implement a weekly dusting and vacuuming schedule you can keep your craft room clean and your health high.

Make a Logical Layout

It makes no sense to place your eighty pound box of fabric on the top shelf of a bookcase in a small corner you can’t reach. It also doesn’t make sense to put a giant drafting table a tiny closet or right in front of the door. So create a layout that makes sense. Provide yourself enough open space to work on large projects and put items together if they are used for a similar function. Put glues and tapes in the same box. Keep rulers, protractors, and measuring tapes in the same place. Making a logical layout will help you in easily accessing the tools you need and easily finding those tools.

Keep Cleaning Supplies on Hand

Say you’re a painter and you know you’re going to spill a bottle of paint or splatter it on the wall instead of the canvas. You’re going to want to be able to clean that mess before it dries and stains forever. Keep some cleaning supplies in your craft room. Rags, cleaning fluid, disinfectant wipes; whatever you think you will need to keep your space stain free should be kept in your craft room. You can put it in that small closet or on a shelf in plain site, but make sure you have what you need.

Find Durable Furniture

It’s going to be difficult to create massive sculptures on a flimsy table or in a chair that’s close to breaking. If your shelves are close to snapping in half, don’t place a metric ton of supplies on them. Invest in durable furniture. Not only will you keep your space free from collapsing furniture, but you will also be able to produce your creations with ease. If you have a table that doesn’t stain easily, you decrease your likelihood of having to clean up a difficult mess. So you can continue to make your masterpiece without any cleaning obstructions simply by investing in some durable furniture. So visit a furniture shop and determine which pieces you want to replace.

Let in the Light

You may not think of good lighting as a way to keep your crafting space clean, but it does help. The more light you have in your crafting space, the more you will see areas you need to improve and clean in your space. Better lighting will not only help you keep your space cleaner but it can also improve your mental health. Let’s be honest, a majority of laziness or lack of interest in completing a task is due to the fact that we may not be in the best headspace. Keeping your room well lit maintains a higher spirit and it increases your likelihood of cleaning any potential mess you see. So bring in a LED light bulbs, buy floor and table lamps, keep the curtains open and get as much natural light as you can. You’ll be glad that you did.

Wipe Down the Walls and Other Flat Surfaces

You would not believe how dank and dark your craft space may be because of how well your walls and/or cabinets disguise it, well except for those of you who have white walls and white cabinets. Perhaps then you might know, but wiping down flat surfaces is highly beneficial. Remember when we were talking about how beneficial good lighting can be? Well this is related to that. Light reflects and refracts. When the surfaces in your craft room are dirty, more light is absorbed by those dirt particles and it doesn’t reach the rest of the room. So cleaning your walls, shelves, and cabinets actually helps to maintain proper lighting. Plus, isn’t it just nicer to look at clean surface when you’re staring off into space? It usually is.

Personalize the Room

Be honest, how often have you let a room go without cleaning because it didn’t match your personal taste in style and decor? You’re not going to put effort into keeping a space clean if you don’t like how it looks to begin with. It’s impersonal, so why would you keep it tidy? Well, change it. Make your space reflect who you are as a person. If you like pastel colors, flowers, and lace curtains; decorate your space with those items. The same goes if you like dragon statues, Star Trek posters, or old typewriters. Whatever expresses your individual style and your personality should be in your craft space. It is your space after all. Once you’ve made it your own, you’ll be more inclined to keep it tidy. So really think about how you want to your space to look and get to redecorating!

With these twelve tips, you can keep your craft room neat and tidy with no trouble at all. All you have to do is determine how you want to do it. Scheduling is up to you. Organization is up to you. Personalization is up to you. Take the time to fully consider how you want to keep your space as beautiful as the art you make. It’s your crafting space, your oasis, treat it with care.